Teaching materials: adopting and adapting

Cultural Content: Culture is crucial 
and sensitive issue in some English classes 
particularly class with multi-nationalities. A 
cultural reference may need to be 
omitted because of a cultural reflection in 
a country may be problematic in another. 
On the other hand, if cultural differences 
and global situations are to be 
emphasized, teachers should present it 
with careful discussion, particularly when 
asking for students’ opinions.
Not Enough Audio-Visual Back-Up: 
Most schools normally do not provide 
audio-visual equipment in a classroom. 
Sometimes they provide low quality ones. 
Teachers need to be prepared and get 
ready for alternative presentation. They 
should try the equipment in advance if 
they do need it in teaching. 

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วารสารวิชาการ สถาบันเทคโนโลยีแห่งสุวรรณภูมิ 
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Uninteresting Topics: Some topics in 
the course book may not be interesting to 
the learners and they need to be changed 
to get learners’ attention. Teachers can 
search the other sources such as 
newspaper, magazine or internet for the 
more interesting and up-to-date topics.
Adapting textbook with too much 
contents 
Teachers may considerably skip some 
unimportant items in the textbooks. 
Alternatively, they may select to do the 
following: 
1. Set textbook exercises or some part 
of exercises for homework/ scrap the 
workbook 
2. Turn the book activities into 
communication games, e.g. turn readings 
into jigsaw readings by getting students to 
read half of the text. Let each one do 
exercise and compare their answers. 
Listening and other kinds of exercises can 
be done similarly. 
3. After students have done a few 
questions in an exercise, teachers can 
check their answers without waiting for 
them to finish it.
4. Select only some questions in an 
exercise for students to do. Make sure 
that the selected questions cover all the 
points they have learned. 
5. While teaching, teachers can skip 
some parts but need to tell the students 
why, e.g. it is too easy or it is not very 
practical or useful, etc. 
6. Make sure to allot time for each 
activity properly. Give more time to more 
important or difficult topics.